You may also note the addition of a new zip file download for WLS itself:

http://download.oracle.com/otn/nt/middleware/11g/wls1033_dev.zip

This is a new smaller distribution of WLS that we are making available as a zip file, which can be simply extracted to a local directory, one script executed to specify some access control settings, and then launch WLS directly from the command line. A new domain will automatically created if none is found.

This is a really good step forward for WLS, making it more easily installed and incorporated into development and testing environments. Please read the README.txt embedded within the zip file for more details on how to start and use the server. Note that this is only supported for development use, not for use in production deployment environments.

By the way, this new WLS zip file distribution has been tested, and is supported on Mac OS X for development use. Enjoy!

Note: an issue was identified by a reader below showing that the upgrade utility was not launching successfully. We have identified a workaround for this which involves adding two additional libraries to the PRE_CLASPATH environment variable before running the upgrade utility.